A little while back, we highlighted a number of interesting combo options available to Pac-Man in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. While those afforded the classic character some big damage, they weren’t exactly the most practical knockout setups.
This time around, we have a great video that serves as just that, showcasing a useful situation in which Pac-Man utilizes his the Bell version of his neutral special to stun opponents and put them in prime position for a kill. This particular strategy was employed by a player named Chef Pac in an online match.
Check it out below and let us know what you think.
After dropping news about Wednesday Night Fights’ return last month, Level|Up Series president Alex Valle jumped on stream today with Twitch’s Mike Ross to discuss the upcoming online tournament series. While much of the early show was dedicated to reiterating key points from the previous announcement, Valle eventually moved onto how the competitions will be structured.
By expanding the scope of their events from a single region to the entirety of North America, the organization is expecting to see a massive uptick in participants. Add to that the fact entry will be entirely free, the likelihood that they’ll reach that goal is pretty high.
Because of that, every Wednesday Night Fights tournament will be preceded by 256-player qualifiers on Tuesdays, the top sixteen bracket of which will be put on hold and carried over to the official events. Sign-ups will open every Monday, and a guide is forthcoming with complete instructions.
These qualifiers won’t be streamed by Level|Up Series, but they are strongly encouraging players to broadcast their own matches and will even be providing free overlay templates for those who wish to use them.
In addition to the usual prizes, the overall winner of the winter season will be flown out to SoCal Regionals 2015 in May, providing a huge opportunity for players outside the country to play at an international tournament.
An archive of Valle’s full discussion can be found here.
Wednesday Night Fights 2015 is scheduled to begin on February 18. Both the qualifying and main events will start at 6 PM PST on their respective days of the week.
News recently hit that Team Dignitas has released the United Kingdom’s Ryan “Prodigal Son” Hart from their competitive roster.
These details come from Hart himself, who was reportedly told by the competitive gaming organization that their priorities were going to shift entirely to PC titles. Dignitas currently fields squads for League of Legends, Starcraft II, and Hearthstone, and announced their return to the SMITE scene earlier this month.
This move comes as quite a surprise with both Capcom Cup 2015, which will feature an impressive $500,000 prize pool, and Street Fighter V’s own PC release on the horizon.
Listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most winning fighting game player in history, Hart remains one of the strongest Street Fighter players in our community today. With this parting of ways, he joins a growing list of high-profile free agents that includes competitors like Seonwoo “Infiltration” Lee, Masato “Bonchan” Takahashi, and Darryl “Snake Eyez” Lewis.
Hart most recently took fifth at Capcom Cup 2014 and placed fourth overall during Gaming Live’s KAKUTOP League, the first of its kind for Ultra Street Fighter IV in Europe.
Dignitas also employed Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 player Zak Bennett, but with the complete removal of the fighting game roster from their website, it appears as if he has also been cut from the team due to their new direction.
With Street Fighter and Marvel garnering most of the fighting game community’s limited attention span, the airdasher scene often finds themselves going by the wayside in favor of bigger names. While that’s started to turn around a bit, mostly thanks to dedicated organizers and players, tournaments that focus entirely on this loose sub-genre are rare outside of Japan.
To alleviate this, Community Effort Orlando’s Alex Jebailey will be holding an all-anime event later this year, giving the whole spotlight to titles developed by studios like Arc System Works, French Bread, Ecole Software, and Lab Zero Games.
As of now, details are limited due to Jebailey’s work on CEO 2015, but fans can expect to see competition in Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-, BlazBlue: Chronophantasma, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late, Dengeki Bunko FIGHTING CLIMAX, Arcana Heart 3 LOVE MAX!!!!!, Skullgirls Encore, Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code, and Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R. More games may be added if they receive enough interest.
This event, tentatively titled All Anime Fighting Game Championships and running under the apt #CEOtaku hashtag, is scheduled for October 17-18 in Orlando, Florida. Keep your eyes on CEO Gaming for more details as we near those dates.
While it’s been some time since the handheld version of Nintendo’s latest Smash title was in the news, the developers recently rolled out a brand new patch for the game that adds a variety of functionality and even addresses some gameplay issues for good measure.
After being updated to ver.1.0.5, Super Smash Bros. for 3DS gains a number of new features, including a share mode that allows players to upload screenshots, replays, and Mii Fighter data to the game’s official server. These items will be fully searchable and available for download across the globe, though they will be removed after 30 days.
Much like previous updates, Nintendo’s official patch notes also vaguely reference changes to the core gameplay, leaving it up to the community to figure out what has been adjusted.
So far, folks over on Reddit have found that the patch corrects a number of mechanics that could be considered bugs, including Greninja’s running Shadow Sneak, Kirby’s ability to hover when using his Dark Pit copy move, the hitstun-canceling technique discovered for Lucario’s Extreme Speed, and more.
The full list of the changes found by the community so far can be found here.
At this point, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U appears to the competitive standard moving forward, but changes implemented in its 3DS sibling may offer a look at what maybe in store for the console version.
Fans hoping to get a few more glimpses of Mortal Kombat X’s Kitana and Reptile need not wait long, according to new details from NetherRealm Studios.
The developers’ next official stream, which is scheduled for later this week, will feature new gameplay footage of the recently revealed cast members. This will more than likely include first looks at their variations, giving players a look at the lineup of fighting styles available to the franchise veterans.
As of now, Kitana’s Mournful variation has raised speculation on the future of fellow assassin Jade, as the princess takes up weapons closely associated with her childhood friend upon choosing.
NetherRealm Studios is set to broadcast this Thursday, February 12, at 3 PM CST (1 PM PST, 4 PM EST). You can check out all the happenings live by way of Twitch.
Official announcements regarding this year’s Capcom Pro Tour have yet to be made by the company themselves, but a handful of events have been given the greenlight to reveal their status on the high-profile lead-up to Capcom Cup 2015.
First up, the folks behind NorCal Regionals 2015 have announced that they will once again have a place on the tour, though their status as a premier or ranking event is still up in the air. Last year, the event served as a straight-up qualifier for Capcom Cup 2014, but it remains to be seen if they will be granted the same position. Online registration is currently open.
While a handful of events culminated in an overall Asian finals during last year’s Capcom Pro Tour, the Korean community will be receiving their very own ranking tournament hosted by ArcadeStream. This news comes from a recently released trailer, which also details plans for a Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- competition.
And finally, Northwest Majors VII will serve as a ranking tournament according to an announcement made on the event’s official website earlier this month. Though it appears as if these details were pulled, a cached version still remains.
These early detail leaks may be a sign that Capcom is ready to reveal their plans for this year’s tour, so stay tuned for official announcements. Thanks to new backing by Sony, Capcom Cup 2015 will feature a $500,000 prize pool.
Publisher Nyu Media has announced that they’re expanding public access to the Yatagarasu Attack on Cataclysm beta on PC. This comes hot on the heels of recent news that the title will be arriving in Japanese arcades on February 12.
Previously available only to those who reached a certain threshold during the group’s crowdfunding efforts, this early build of the indie fighter will now be open to those who donated at least $10. These backers will be receiving their keys via email by the end of the month.
As for when the finished version of the game will come out, Nyu Media is unfortunately unable to provide a firm release date, as lead designer Kotani’s time is currently dominated with this and other projects. That said, the work on the core of the game is done, but there are still some elements needed for the PC release that have yet to be completed.
Apart from how you play, the colors you choose for your main help set you apart from the dozens of other competitors who use the same character. More and more, developers are starting to provide players with a variety of palettes to choose from, and in some cases we’re provided ways to customize cast members even more than the creators envisioned.
Hell, the results of the marquee exhibition at Apex 2015 between Leffen and Liquid’s Chillin hinged on which player would be able to use Fox’s main colors in Super Smash Bros. Melee in addition to whatever monetary rewards they had put on the table.
If you don’t want to miss out on an extra color palette in Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-, today is your last day to grab a nifty black and blue pattern free of charge. While the downloadable content extends to every cast member, there is a catch in that you’ll need to have an active PlayStation Plus subscription to add these colors to your game. (Editor’s note: This article originally stated that additional characters Sin Kiske, Elphelt Valentine, and Leo Whitefang were necessary to access this content as well, but that was a mistake. We apologize for the error.)
These colors are available on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3, so be sure to follow their respective links before it’s too late.
Back in 1995, Nintendo made a bold move: they cast aside the constraints of 2D and strode bravely into the foreground with their short-lived Virtual Boy system. It’s not that virtual reality was invented by Nintendo–far from it–but the company did make the mid-90s sensation affordable, and (sort of) portable. Sadly, this product only appealed to a small audience and was discontinued not even a full year later in early 1996.
Chances are that if you weren’t among the few who owned a Virtual Boy, you likely knew someone who did. I remember the day my neighbor got one: all the local kids gathered around while he unboxed it and tried different positions to sit in to get comfortable. The floor, on some pillows, on the couch, on his small desk–from which it promptly tumbled–eventually settling on the spacious kitchen table. When my turn finally came around, I was positively enthralled for all of thirty seconds before realizing that Mario’s hat and shirt should be red, but the rest of the world probably shouldn’t be.
That was the only time that I ever used the Virtual Boy and I never regretted not saving up my allowance to snag one of my own. It says a lot about the success of a cutting-edge game system if a kid who fancied himself a gamer didn’t have any interest in owning one. Maybe that’s because the game’s limited library just didn’t have the sort of options that would have made me want to pick one up.
While much of the world may have forgotten the Virtual Boy, the console still holds a small, loyal following to this day. So loyal, in fact, that members have gone so far as to produce a homebrew port of Street Fighter II for the system that barely was. While the mere creation of such a project is already a feat in itself, it turns out that the resulting game was so large that it wouldn’t fit on a normal Virtual Boy game card, so the creators not only had to code the game, but also had to build a new cartridge just to hold their work so that it could actually be played.
From what video footage shows, the extra effort was worth it, because the game looks pretty damned good. Although depicted in the expected red and black formate, the graphics are honestly impressive for the system. The backgrounds have nice 3D effects and move around based on the position of the fighters–E. Honda’s stage is an excellent example of this–the sound effects and voices are spot-on, and even the music is accurate.
Now comes what may be the most important question: how are the controls? As SpeedyInk mentions in his review of the game, they’re as tight as you’d expect in a Street Fighter title, but there is one small problem: the Virtual Boy controller doesn’t have nearly enough face buttons. Instead of extra buttons, it has a second D-Pad, which the coders mapped to throw the appropriate punches and kicks associated with the directional inputs triggered. It honestly sounds like a nightmare, but all is not lost; to help remedy the controller situation, as well as to add yet another feat to the game’s long list, the game has the ability to support a Super Nintendo pad. It’s not a stick, but it has to be better than those two D-Pads.
Those lucky enough to own copies of this gem also have a fully-realized box that mimics, in every way, the packaging that Nintendo would have shipped with products of their own in back in the day. They even included a full-color instruction manual, something that the gaming world has all but forgotten these days (but that’s a topic for another time).
So where can you get your copy? Well, you can’t. Unless you’ve got some connections within the Virtual Boy community, you’re pretty much out of luck. There hasn’t been, nor will there be, any mass distribution of this title due to various legal issues that should be expected with such a project containing copyrighted characters. This homebrew version of the game on which many of us cut our teeth was not built for profit, it was a labor of love–and one that appears to have produced something very special.
To see the game in action and to take a closer look at the instruction manual and box, check out the video below from Vectrex Roli.
